Six finalists determined for next Burlington police chief

Published: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 at 06:36 PM.

Six finalists have been selected for final consideration to be Burlington next police chief, with two candidates within the department still in the running, City Manager Harold Owen said.

Owen said he is in the final stages of making a decision about who will replace current Chief Mike Williams, who is retiring on May 1 after five years on the job and 26 years with the department. Fifty-three people applied for the position.

“It’s been a long process,” Owen said Wednesday. “I think we’re in the last phase of this.”

He said the job was first advertised in multiple forums November of last year. The original list of applicants was whittled down to 16 in early February based on a review of applications and preliminary background checks.

By Feb. 15, the remaining applicants underwent a secondary screening process, which included an online survey, telephone interviews, and an emotional intelligence inventory test, which Owen said gets to the core of an individual’s personality and reveals how his or her traits would present themselves on the job.

“From that, the list was reduced down to six individuals,” Owen said.

Of those six, two come from within the Burlington Police Department and the others hail from Florida, Virginia, Kentucky, and Arizona, he said. All the applicants then participated in an intense assessment, directed by Dr. Stephen Straus, president and founder of Developmental Associates LLC.

Six finalists have been selected for final consideration to be Burlington next police chief, with two candidates within the department still in the running, City Manager Harold Owen said.

Owen said he is in the final stages of making a decision about who will replace current Chief Mike Williams, who is retiring on May 1 after five years on the job and 26 years with the department. Fifty-three people applied for the position.

“It’s been a long process,” Owen said Wednesday. “I think we’re in the last phase of this.”

He said the job was first advertised in multiple forums November of last year. The original list of applicants was whittled down to 16 in early February based on a review of applications and preliminary background checks.

By Feb. 15, the remaining applicants underwent a secondary screening process, which included an online survey, telephone interviews, and an emotional intelligence inventory test, which Owen said gets to the core of an individual’s personality and reveals how his or her traits would present themselves on the job.

“From that, the list was reduced down to six individuals,” Owen said.

Of those six, two come from within the Burlington Police Department and the others hail from Florida, Virginia, Kentucky, and Arizona, he said. All the applicants then participated in an intense assessment, directed by Dr. Stephen Straus, president and founder of Developmental Associates LLC.

There, the candidates were given four different exercises modeled after “all realistic situations” that Burlington’s police chief would have to manage, Owen said. One question raised was how they’d plan to develop a young police force and train them for leadership positions.

The other simulations included attending a hostile community meeting where candidates were judged on how they interacted with the public and maintained control, appearing before a city council to answer staffing questions, and seeing how they worked with a personnel member who had not accomplished a duty required of him or her.

The candidates were evaluated by a group of assessors, including chiefs of police from Cary, Durham, High Point, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem, and assistant chiefs of police from Chapel Hill, Raleigh and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill police departments.

After being critiqued by the panel, the candidates were each given scores and individually interviewed by Owen. Now, he’s in the midst of the last step — a final, deep background check.

Owen said he’s talking to the six applicants’ colleagues and professional contacts to gauge their training backgrounds, how they act within their own communities, see where they stand on important practices like community policing and intelligence policing – using data to prioritize resources.

“An awful lot of vetting has to go forward, and that’s the process we’re in now,” said Owen. “It’s an important decision.”